Project Why Wait: Today Was A Good Day

Well, actually a week ago yesterday was a good day, but keeping with the musically influenced titles today was a good day works better than two weeks ago a good day happened. Regardless, two Sundays ago the cab of Project Why Wait was removed from its original chassis and placed on the one that Jeff Wybrow and Dave Newberry built.

I’d been steadily chipping away at removing everything necessary for this transfer so that the tensile strength of some random component wasn’t tested when the cab was hoisted into the air.

If you remember the truck on the stock chassis is actually too tall to fit in any of the bays which meant we had to do the swap outside. Since it was just Blair, Chris Johnston (who also took a few photos because I forgot my camera), Brian Taylor, and myself we enlisted the help of a tractor to do the heavy lifting.

Seeing the cab floating in a tractor bucket was a little nerve-racking because that’s where the bulk of my money is so far.

Thankfully nothing happened (though the strap did break later that day moving something else) and the cab went down on the frame without incident.

With the cab on the shorter, air ride equipped chassis, everything looked so much smaller, and about 100 times cooler.

But there were no laurels to be rested on as the bed had to get roughly placed as well. The bed was, prior to us moving it in the bed of another truck underneath the front end of yet a different truck.

I’ve actually owned the bed and running boards for a few months now, but didn’t feel it was worth mentioning until now because lets be honest that is a bit of a boring update on its own.

Body wise I need one of the small filler pieces between the running board and body then I have everything needed to make a short bed.

As you can tell the bed is, red(ish) and not blue, this will be rectified at a later date. The plan is to paint the bed all the colors we can currently see on the cab then patina it to match.

For now it sits on the frame in all its crooked glory.

After that the only natural next step was to mock a fender up and take a bit of a step back.

If you squint, and use a bit of imagination, it looks exactly like the renderings Chris did last year, and no, if you’re wondering that isn’t the truck fully aired out.

From here the rough order of operations is as follows; square up the bed via an inserted frame and mount it to the chassis, build shock mounts, mount the cab, build front shock mounts, order motor mounts, order a cross member, and then finally build a radiator core support mount the front end and hope everything lays where it should.

Then tear it all apart and send it out for paint.

I’m not sure when the next build day will be just yet but in the meantime I’ve been ordering a ton of parts and waiting for more. I should have a motor and transmission for next update but I’ll leave you all guessing on that for a bit longer.

Until then here’s a parting shot of Ash and I spending a little time in the truck.

The front of the cab is where it should be on the OEM mounts. The rear is just sitting on the rails, I have to grab the mounts off the old frame so the rear should come up slightly so the front fender lines up better. The center section of the frame is advanced design (hence the mounts for the steps) so it shouldn’t take too much fiddling. But famous last words…